At Trump’s request, NATO allies will add $ 100 billion more to defense by the end of 2019

Donald Trump’s appeal to other NATO member states to increase military spending has worked, said Sunday the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg.

“By the end of next year, NATO allies will have added” some “100 billion additional dollars for defense,” Stoltenberg told Fox News Channel.

“We see that President Trump’s clear message has an impact,” he said, speaking of “good news” to qualify the increase in these expenses.

The 45th President of the United States regularly calls on other partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to increase their military spending.

“We will be with NATO 100%, but as I told the countries (members of the Alliance), you have to change gear and you have to pay,” Donald Trump had said since the Pentagon on January 17 .

The Republican President welcomed on Twitter this news announced by the Secretary General of NATO.

“Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, has just said that thanks to me NATO has been able to harvest far more money from its members than ever before, after years of decline,” wrote on Twitter the US president.

“It’s called burden sharing. More united too, “he continued.

But his commitment to the Atlantic alliance has raised questions recently, the New York Times reports that last year, Donald Trump would have repeatedly told senior US officials he did not see the interest of NATO and that the United States should withdraw from it.

The unidentified officials and former administration officials told the newspaper that they feared that the US president would reiterate this threat during the tumultuous NATO summit in July 2018, when he accused the allies of not to participate sufficiently in the expenses of the military alliance.

Trump’s entourage was finally able to save the situation, but rumors had circulated in Brussels about threats by the US president to quit the alliance created in the midst of the Cold War to ensure the security of Western Europe in the face of The soviet union.